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The Changing Church in Mexico and Its Challenge to the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Claude Pomerleau
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Extract

Since the nineteenth century, Mexican history has encompassed many social conflicts that range from local rebellions to full-scale revolutions. Church-state relations have been closely related to, and affected by, these conflicts. The struggle between church and state led to the War of the Reform (1858) and to the Cristero Rebellion (1926). Both of these armed conflicts were resolved through an improvised and cumulative process that eventually did as much to obscure the causes of conflict as to remedy them. After independence, the liberals initiated the first phase of conflict, a conflict eventually extended into the twentieth century by various advocates of a strong, secular state. The conflict began as a resistance to the efforts to reform the church and to give the state a neutral orientation and subsequently escalated into a divisive cultural war. Conservative politicians and religious leaders took up the liberal challenge with a doctrine justifying a specific political order at almost any price, thereby involving the church and the state in a mutually destructive and increasingly bitter struggle.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 1981 , pp. 540 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1981

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References

1 There is a general consensus in the interpretation of church-state relations under the patronato real. See Farriss, N.M., Crown and Clergy in Colonial Mexico (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Mecham, J. Lloyd, Church and State in Latin America (Chapel Hill, 1966)Google Scholar.

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33 These broad preoccupations are particularly notable in the National Theological Association. See Memoria del Primer Congreso National de Teología Fey Desarrollo, Sociedad de Teología (México, 1970), 2 volsGoogle Scholar. A more restrictive and traditional interpretation of church in society can be found in Barragán, Javier Lozano, Puebla pueblo liberacíon educacion (México, 1980)Google Scholar.

34 “Carta pastoral del episcopado mexicano sobre el desarrollo e integracíon de nuestra patria en el primer aniversario de la encíclia ‘Populorum Progressio,’ ” 26 marzo 1968.

35 A comprehensive survey of bishops' attitudes toward social change appears in Delappe, Edward Larry Mayer, “La política social de la iglesia católica en México a partir del Concilio Vaticano II; 1964–1974” (Tesis Professional, UNAM 1977)Google Scholar. For an innovating approach to the changing leadership styles of bishops in a single diocese, see Beltrán, Lauro López, Díocesis y obispos de Cuernavaca 1875–1978 (México, 1978)Google Scholar.

36 “Nuestro compromiso cristiano con los indigenas y campesinos de la regíon pacifico-sur,” Documento de Trabajo (Oaxaca, 1977)Google Scholar.

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39 This conclusion rests on interviews with 20 bishops, 150 priests, nuns and lay leaders of the Mexican church by the author in 1979.

40 Several influential writers in this area are: Garcíi, Jesús, “Condicionamentos socioeclesiales en la reflexiíon teologica en América Latina” in Liberatíon y Cautiverio (México, 1976), pp. 275–78Google Scholar; Ramírez, Manuel González, Aspectos estructurales de la iglesia catolica mexicana (México, 1972)Google Scholar; Cambio social. Construction de una sociedad nueva (México, 1976)Google Scholar.

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43 One target of violent attacks against reform in Mexican Catholicism is Bishop Mendèz Arceo of Cuernavaca. On 9 March 1978, Mendez Arceo was officially criticized by the executive committee of the Bishops Conference (CEM) for his support of socialism. See Beltrán, Lauro López, Cuernavaca, p. 288Google Scholar.

44 The principal authors in the reinterpretation of theology and politics in Mexico are Luis del Valle, S. J., Roberto Oliveros, S. J., Arnaldo Zenteno, S. J., Bishop Samuel Ruiz, Raul Vidales, Miguel Concha, O. P., and Jesús García. For the traditional position of the Catholic church on the role of the state in society, see Rommen, Heinrich A., The State in Catholic Thought (St. Louis and London, 1945)Google Scholar.

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